@Macweez73, of course, is Garcia, a 6-foot-4, 290-pound junior and former starting left tackle at Maryland who announced his plans to transfer to Florida in late April. Garcia, along with a few talented recruits, have coaches salivating about the potential of next year’s offensive line.

When teammates learned Garcia would not make the trip, they were hot about it.

“Man, that made me so mad,” fifth-year senior James Wilson said. “That’s our boy. He’s going to have a great year next year.”

Some say he played a major role in the defense’s success this season, so it was disappointing when he couldn’t make it to in New Orleans.

“He was bummed out. We were bummed out,” Halapio said about Garcia being forced to stay home. “During the eight practices we had in Gainesville, he was just practcing that whole time with us so hard. It just sucks because the offensive line, we’re a unit and we saw how hard he worked this year.”

Garcia practiced all season with the team. He worked out on scout team and, by all accounts, gave the Gators’ defensive front ferocious battles each and every snap.

He was always spirited on the sidelines, bouncing around before kickoff like he was about to play and high-fiving teammates after they made big plays just like he was on the field with them.

“We thought he deserved to come out here,” Halapio said. “He made our defense better every day. He’s still a part of our team, so why can’t he come out? We understand it’s an NCAA issue, it’s out of the coaches’ hands and everything, but he should have been here.”

Even though he’s been on campus a short time, Garcia was able to bond rather quickly with the Gators — especially his fellow offensive linemen.

“He’s just like us — He’s one of us,” Wilson said. “Max is just a real guy. He’s awesome.

“He enjoys practicing and he makes practices fun to go to. He’s just one of those guys who you know is feeling the same way you do and even though he knew he couldn’t play (in games), he’s going to strap it on and go to work.

Mike Capshaw brings a wealth of experience to the Gator Country team. He’s been overseeing all editorial aspects of GatorCountry.com and Gator Country magazine by managing our team of staffers, interns and freelancers. He is now moving into a bigger role as a reporter by covering the football and basketball beats as well as providing coverage of all sports on campus. Mike’s 15 years in the business has included more than six years of covering SEC sports and recruiting at a daily newspaper in Arkansas. He has also helped launch a newspaper, magazines, websites and even a sports talk radio show. Because Mike puts family ahead of his career, he left the place where he was established when his wife received an opportunity to further her career at UF. He took a leap of faith that he could find a job in the Gainesville area and worked for a year at a newspaper group before joining the Gator Country family in November, 2011. Mike has won Florida Press Association awards for Best Sports Game Story and Best Sports Feature Story in the past two years as well as a company-wide award at his former newspaper group that includes some 60 publications, for Excellence in Sports Reporting. You can follow Mike on Twitter at @MikeCapshawGC.

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